Woman Who Could Not Forget (45 page)

At this period of time, besides her research on her next book and the speech engagement, much of Iris’s precious time was spent in dealing with this matter, and we were all glad it was finally over. (Note: It took ten years, until November 2007, the tenth anniversary of the publication of Iris’s book in the U.S. and the seventieth anniversary of the Nanking Massacre, for the Japanese translation of her book to finally be published in Japan.)

There was an unexpected result of the translation dispute. The abrupt halt of the Japanese translation resulted in a boost in paperback sales of the book in the U.S. and even in Japan, though it was only available in English. Caroline White, the book editor of Viking Penguin, told Iris that in March, after the news came out, sales had shot up.

When the Japanese translation issue ended, next came the Cox report—another thing that occupied some of Iris’s time during this period. The Cox report was the January 3, 1999 product of a special committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China. The report alleged that the PRC had stolen some secrets of U.S. nuclear-weapon designs. The redacted report was declassified in May 1999. Iris got a copy of it and found out that her book on Dr. Tsien,
Thread of the Silkworm,
was cited in the footnotes of the Cox report as a reference nine times. To her dismay, it seemed that her book on Dr. Tsien had been used to indicate that Dr. Tsien was a Communist. They also believed that he was a Chinese spy, and had deported him back to China (in the 1950s). Later, an article in
Time
magazine about Chinese espionage also implied Dr. Tsien was a spy, using the Cox report as a source. Worse yet, in a similar article in the
Washington Times
, it simply asserted that Dr. Tsien
was
a spy. This infuriated Iris and she immediately sought to clarify it in a statement, saying that in her three years of research, Dr. Tsien was
never
officially charged by the U.S. government with spying. In the 1950s, the U.S. government had not found any evidence that he was a spy. Iris said that instead, he was accused of being a “potential” Communist; however, the U.S. government could not find any concrete proof of that, either. Therefore, Iris said that unless there was new evidence indicating that he was a Communist, the accusation in the Cox report was irresponsible. Iris asked the staff of the Cox report committee for more information proving that Dr. Tsien was a spy, but they said they could not release anything was not in the published report for reasons of national security.

This was during the tense period that Chinese spying and espionage was front-page news in this country almost every week. On March 6, 1999, the
New York Times
printed a front-page story about a security breach at the Los Alamos National Laboratory involving one of the United States’ most advanced thermonuclear warheads, the W-88. Two days after the March 6 article, Dr. Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese-American nuclear physicist working at Los Alamos, was fired and his named leaked to the press as the man under FBI investigation for espionage. The case was compounded by the release of the Cox report.

At this time it seemed that all Chinese-American scientists working on weapons research in this country were Chinese spies, reminiscent of the 1950s McCarthy era’s witch-hunt for Communists! Many Chinese-American organizations and minority groups joined together to protest about the U.S. government for its racial profiling and stereotyping. Iris was particularly unhappy about it, and the Wen Ho Lee case was one of the subjects in her speech and in
The Chinese in America.

Eventually, as we later learned, Dr. Lee was charged with only one count of improperly downloading classified (later labeled “restricted”) data. After eight months in solitary confinement in handcuffs and shackles, Dr. Lee was released by Judge James Parker, who offered an apology to Lee for what he called “abuse of power” by the federal government in its prosecution of the case.

In the spring of 1999, Iris told us that she had been invited to give a keynote speech at a conference organized by Bay area Asian-Americans called Aspire 1999. We were already planning to visit her around that time, so she invited all of us to the conference evening gala event.

On May 29, we flew to San Francisco and arrived at the Hyatt near the airport in time for the dinner and the speech. We sat at a table of several distinguished guests to whom Iris had introduced to us: California House Representative Michael Honda, Oregon State House Representative David Wu, entrepreneur John Chen, and others. When we finished the dinner before the dessert, the MC introduced Iris to the podium and Iris delivered her keynote speech.

The title of her speech was “The Human Right to Historical Honesty.” Her powerful and clear voice attracted the attention of all five hundred people in the ballroom. I observed that during her speech no one left their table and only her words filled the air. She touched on the current issue of the Cox report and the ongoing racial profiling of the Chinese for espionage. She said “I am not here to defend or accuse Tsien. I’m not even ruling out the possibility that he was a spy. . . . But if the U.S. government is going to make serious accusations against a man who isn’t here to defend himself, then they should be prepared to back up their accusations with evidence. There’s a big difference between accusation and actual proof!”

She also gave her reason why historical honesty was important; it had direct bearing on our future as an ethnic minority in this country. “As Asian-Americans,” she said, “we have the right to see our people included—both honestly and accurately—in the pantheon of American history.” She continued: “Unfortunately, to this day, there are still few films or books about Asians that are historically honest. We still have images of Asian women as prostitutes or sex slaves, and Asian men as drug lords or spies—or just plain geeks.” She told the audience, “One way to dispel prejudice is to write a book. I’m trying to combat stereotypes with my current work in progress—a narrative history of the Chinese in America.”

She strongly criticized the Cox report and the
Washington Times,
saying, “Their story reminds me of the kind of irresponsible journalism that marred the Tsien case during the McCarthy era.” She said, “I think the Asian-American community is entitled to historical accuracy and honesty from the U.S. government. If they’re going to call Tsien a spy, then they should open up the records and prove it, especially on a subject that happened fifty years ago. You can’t have a government arbitrarily labeling people as Communists or spies. And you can’t engage in a fair discussion with the U.S. government if they are withholding evidence, or jumping to conclusions without evidence and then insisting, when questioned, that their facts are classified. As U.S. citizens, we have the right to know. At this moment, more is at stake than whether Tsien was a spy or not. If we don’t press our own government for accountability, they may come to believe that they can rewrite history at whim.”

This led to the reason why she had wanted to write
The Rape of Nanking
. She told the audience, “History is one way to maintain checks and balances to power. . . Historical amnesia only increases the possibility of human-rights abuse and genocide. For it emboldens those who think they could get away with murder, and not be judged for their actions by future generations.” Iris continued: “We have a moral responsibility to speak out against injustice. . . . It was this sense of moral responsibility—and moral outrage—that goaded me to write my second book,
The Rape of Nanking.”

I was certainly very moved by her speech. After the party, she was surrounded by young Asian-Americans who asked her questions and started taking photos with her. Her speech impressed many people, and one representative of a famous speakers’ agency came up to her and tried to recruit her as a client.

Besides travel, speech engagements, and research for her next book, she was also writing Op-Ed pieces to newspaper editors whenever she saw fit because at this time, almost two years after the publication of
The Rape of Nanking
, the book was still subjected to discussion in the media and people still could not stop talking about it. Iris was not scared to fight back when she felt a criticism of her book was unfair.

In a letter to the editor of the
Los Angeles Times
on October 17, 1999, she referred back to Joshua Fogel, who had criticized Harriet Mills’s book review of the book
The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe.
In Fogel’s letter, he wrote that “Iris’s book
The Rape of Nanking
was not only based on ‘flimsy’ evidence, but roundly criticized by historians who have investigated the topic. . . .” Iris asked in her letter, “Exactly which parts of my research did he find ‘flimsy’? The Rabe diary? The thousands of records kept by American missionaries who witnessed the massacre? The firsthand accounts of both Chinese survivors and Japanese participants? The contemporaneous press coverage?” Iris continued, “Fair disclosure would require Fogel to mention that almost all the historians critical of
The Rape of Nanking
are Japanese. . . . Outside of Japan, however, the response to my book has been overwhelmingly favorable. . . .”

I don’t think Iris was exaggerating. J. G. Ballard in England had written an excellent review of Iris’s book that was published on February 21, 1999 in London’s
Sunday Times.
After the review, Iris’s book was on the best-seller list in London. Ballard praised the book highly, saying “I shuddered over each page of this heart-rending book, but strongly urge everyone to read it.” Iris was thrilled, especially because Ballard himself was a respected author and critic whom Iris truly admired. Iris had read his book
The Empire of the Sun,
which described his childhood war experience in the 1940s, when he and his parents were in Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese War.

Later, in the 1980s, our family had watched the movie of the same name, based on his book. After the book review, Iris was able to correspond with him. Ballard was very kind and mailed an autographed bookplate specifically for us. Iris pasted the autographed bookplate into his book and gave it to us as a gift. On the bookplate, he signed “For Shau-Jin and Ying-Ying Chang, Survivors of the Pacific War. Best wishes, J G Ballard.” We were as excited as Iris was!

Iris told us that it was not uncommon for a book to be criticized when it was first published. As she wrote to us on November 4, 1999, John Steinbeck’s book
The Grapes of Wrath
had also been attacked at the time it was published:

Dear Mom:

Tonight I read an article about John Steinbeck’s life in the Los Gatos mountains area, and learned that the reaction to THE GRAPES OF WRATH mirrored that of THE RAPE OF NANKING. In a letter to a friend Steinbeck wrote: “The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. The latest is a rumor started by them that the Okies hate me for lying about them. So I’m frightened at the rolling might of this thing. It is completely out of hand. I mean a kind of hysteria about the book is growing that is not healthy.”

Love, Iris

One of Iris’s friends told her, “The root of the hostility in some criticism toward you lies in the fact that you got so much fame and attention for
The Rape of Nanking
. A backlash is inevitable.”

On the other hand, Iris was happy that so many people supported her. In August 1999, Lou Reda’s documentary
The Rape of Nanking,
in which Iris was interviewed, was shown on the History Channel. The documentary gave a boost to the sales of Iris’s book. Iris said she could see the ranking of the paperback on Amazon.com soar immediately after the documentary aired.

But the most gratifying thing was that the Rape of Nanking has now earned its place in world history because of her tireless efforts. On September 22, 1999, she wrote:

Dear Mom,

Now, a piece of good news: the Rape of Nanking has earned its place in world history. When I visited the local SuperCrown in Sunnyvale last week, I found the Nanking massacre included in several recently published histories of the 20th century. For instance, author Martin Gilbert devotes pages 161 to 165 of his massive “A History of the Twentieth Century, volume 2: 1933-1951” to the Rape of Nanking, and even quotes me directly on page 162. (His information on Nanking is derived almost exclusively from my book, with the exception of a few quotes gleaned from other works.) The Rape of Nanking also appears in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to 20th Century History” (p. 232), and Peter Jennings’s “The Century,” and Steven Ambrose’s “American Heritage New History of World War II.”

Remember how I agonized about RON missing the 50th anniversary of World War II? In the end, it didn’t make a difference. In fact, now in retrospect, I believe the timing of THE RAPE OF NANKING was perfect. It appeared in print only three years before the close of the millennium, giving other historians time to include this atrocity in world history epics slated for publication in 1999 or 2000.

Much love, Iris

Starting in August of 1999, Iris had spent her time reading all the books and thesis papers she had collected on the Chinese in America. After finishing each book, she typed the major themes, and the most intriguing facts, into her computer databases in preparation for her writing. Her neck and wrists were sore from the long hours of typing. Finally, she hired a student researcher to help her type the information into the computer. The materials she collected were vast. In February, Iris and Brett moved to a new apartment down the street in hopes of being able to cure Brett’s allergies; they suspected the old apartment might have mold problems. Their new apartment was not big, so she hired a carpenter to install shelves on the walls to hold her boxes of books and research materials. When we came to visit them at the end of May, I was impressed to see two walls of shelves full of books and papers.

Iris said that the more she read, the sharper the picture she had in her mind of individuals, and of the progress of the Chinese as a group. And she said she was no longer threatened by the boxes of books and materials, like she had been at the beginning of this project, but actually looked forward to writing it.